Each school day the dabbawala delivered a fresh, hot, home-cooked lunch to Jasmine Sheth (and many others), each dish packed into a stack of three circular aluminum tins, or tiffins, with roti on the side, a salted lassi, and something sweet. The food itself was cooked every morning by her mother, and sent off via Mumbai’s sprawling lunchbox delivery system by bicycle and rail. The tins returned the same way each evening....
I recently finished reading the 2011 Will Hermes book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (Faber & Faber), an entertaining and well-researched account of cutting-edge music in New York between 1973 and 1977. Hermes crafts a strictly chronological, diaristic collage, each entry addressing one of the various scenes—Latin music, free jazz, hip-hop, classical minimalism, protopunk—that were then colliding in a thrilling, freewheeling way. I thought of the book when I read violinist Sam Bardfeld’s liner notes to his new trio album, The Great Enthusiasms (BJU), where he briefly describes growing up in New York in the 70s and early 80s:...
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, October 16, 2017. Chance the Rapper to headline Obama Foundation Summit concert Chance the Rapper will headline the Obama Foundation Summit closing concert at the Wintrust Arena November 1. Gloria Estefan and the National will also perform at the event, which follows the two-day leadership conference especially directed toward youth, which will feature speeches from Prince Harry of Wales and former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, among others....
My girlfriend has a Spotify playlist called “Emotional Bangers,” and it’s made up entirely of too-earnest, heart-on-the-sleeve hip-hop jams. Though it leans pretty heavily on Drake and the Weeknd, Chicago native Juice Wrld is a major presence as well. To hear him tell it, Juice Wrld has a lot of feelings; Juice Wrld also has lots of weed and pills. Though he’s only 20, he’s spent the past couple years redefining what’s possible in chart-busting hip-hop, evolving past not only its traditional hard-hitting beats and acrobatic wordplay but also the woozy trap of recent years....
Outside of the Chicago International Film Festival, the hottest movie ticket in town this week is likely Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which is now playing at River East, the Arclight, and the Landmark Century. I consider Parasite to be Bong’s best film since Memories of Murder (2003); the South Korean writer-director mixes comedy, suspense, and social commentary so successfully that the combination comes to seem irreducible. Clearly I’m not alone in my admiration for the film—it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and it’s been selling out screens across the country since it opened in the U....
“I’m still getting used to the cold,” says Noah Frazier, 25, a masonry restoration worker who spent most of his life in India and Singapore. Despite loving the outdoors, the Bridgeport resident—who moved from Berlin five years ago—does his best to avoid feeling chilly. “My German grandfather had this saying, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, just pointless clothing,’” he says, first in German, then in English. “Even though it’s like 50 degrees today, I put on my thermals and my big coat because I figure you can always shed a layer....
Chicago has a rich paranormal history. If the tales are true, our city has ghosts in its nightclubs (the Limelight, Excalibur, and Castle Chicago, all in the old Chicago Historical Society building on Dearborn), in its hotels (the Congress Plaza Hotel reputedly throngs with spirits, including those of Al Capone and a murdered peg-legged hobo), and obviously in its graveyards (most famously, Resurrection Cemetery in southwest-suburban Justice is ground zero for sightings of a phantom hitchhiking woman nicknamed Resurrection Mary, who’s been appearing since the 1930s)....
The 70s might have been the last time the media treated jazz music as part of the mainstream: Sun Ra appeared on Saturday Night Live, John McLaughlin arguably received as much coverage in rock magazines as David Bowie, and major labels A&M and Arista had entire rosters of jazz artists. In the midst of all of this was the jazz-funk subgenre. Though it was much maligned by jazz purists in its heyday, it’s become revered by rare-groove DJs too young to have experienced it firsthand....
UPDATE Saturday, March 14, 7:30 PM: this event canceled performances for Saturday, March 14 and Sunday, March 15. Contact box office to confirm performances past this weekend and for information about refunds/exchanges. I guess a bad play could be written about the hostile overthrow of a Cleveland Heights karaoke bar at the hands of a hard-cider magnate named Ethan, whose business card says, “purveyor of fine spirits and sophisticated settings.” I don’t see how, though....
The story of Mdou Moctar’s early years reads like show-business boilerplate. Growing up in a conservative rural town in central Niger, he had neither money nor parental permission to buy a guitar, so he scavenged items such as bits of wood and bicycle brake cables until he had enough parts to build his own. Moctar had to leave town to make his debut recording, and though it didn’t even get a proper release, the Auto-tune-soaked song “Tahoultine” became a regional hit as people across the Sahel swapped it from cell phone to cell phone....
Shasta Matthews and Tierney Reed, aka Klevah Knox and T.R.U.T.H. of Chicago hip-hop duo Mother Nature, look like they’ve walked right out of a music video, even though they’re just hanging out on the two enormous black couches in the corner of their Bronzeville living room. Reed is wearing red pants, a black tee, and an unbuttoned short-sleeve shirt in blocks of red, white, and blue. Matthews, who’s scrolling through menus in NBA 2K, idly trying to duplicate herself in the game’s character creator, has on sea-green snow pants with a black crop top—and even though this particular Sunday in February is just after the worst of the polar vortex, she says the snow pants are “purely for steez purposes....
When word spread last week that actor, director, and playwright Michael Martin had died unexpectedly on April 26 at age 63, several of the posts on his Facebook wall expressed the same sentiment. In fact, the number of strangers mourning the onetime Chicagoan’s death appeared to outnumber those of us who actually knew him (full disclosure: Martin and I had been friends for almost 25 years). Martin went on to found his own storefront theater company, Great Beast, as well as writing, producing, and acting in multiple productions during his time in Chicago....
Maya Angelou once said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Michael McCarthy was the kind of person that could make you feel seen. A quiet and humble legend in the Chicago comedy community, many met Michael at the Second City, starting as an intern then moving on to become a cast member on the e....
Gossip Wolf Got the retail-therapy blues when Permanent Records closed their Ukrainian Village store this summer, but the space already has a new lease on life! Chicago record-collecting couple Jesa Espinoza and Rosemary Villaseñor will open Joyride Records in the former Permanent storefront at noon on Saturday, September 30, throwing a free party with DJs at 2 PM (including Dave McCune, Hunter Husar, and Sr. Marlowe of Sonorama), bands to be announced, and complimentary beer from Half Acre....
On a road trip last weekend I listened to a recently released reissue on the German imprint Shadoks, one of the premier purveyors of obscure global psychedelia. As you can see above, the cover of Turkuz Turku Cagiririz! by the duo of Mazhar ve Fuat is pretty irresistible, but I have to admit that I had never heard of the group. It turns out they were core figures one of Turkey’s most successful and long-lived rock bands: Mazhar Fuat Özkan....
This past weekend saw the release of Todd Phillips’s Joker, a gritty and downbeat drama about Batman’s archnemesis before he found his calling as a supervillain. Large portions of the film concern the title character—known here as Arthur Fleck—as he works a day job as clown for hire and tries his hand at stand-up comedy at night. Joaquin Phoenix is powerful as the mentally unstable Arthur, and he proves himself surprisingly adept at clowning as well; it’s a highly physical performance that ranks among the actor’s best work....
On August 19, rapper Phonte Coleman posted album art for May the Lord Watch (Imagine Nation Music/Members Only/Empire), a previously unannounced full-length by his North Carolina hip-hop duo, Little Brother on Instagram. It’d been nine years since the last Little Brother album, 2010’s Leftback, but Phonte and fellow MC Big Pooh didn’t try to heighten the suspense with a long lead-up: they dropped May the Lord Watch at midnight that same night....
The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with The TRiiBE that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Written by Arthur E. Haynes IIPhotography by ThoughtPoet Video by Alex Y. DingShot at Nat King Cole Park, 361 E. 85th Except for his production on “BMO,” a single from Ari Lennox‘s new Shea Butter Baby, fans haven’t heard from Omen for almost four years—not since December 2015, when he contributed fan favorites “48 Laws” and “Caged Bird” to the Dreamville label compilation Revenge of the Dreamers II....
Wardrobe stylist Samuel Ng had twice as much impact with a printed set he bought in Hong Kong. He finished the eclectic look with futuristic sunglasses and a hat of Pharrell-like proportions.
